“I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. “There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient.”

Menendez says Americans have high anxiety and are impatient? Oh geez Louise… Speaking of sugarcoating… I recall using that word in reference to Menendez and the MOTHERS Act pushers a few more than 10 times.

In epic upset, GOP’s Brown wins Mass. Senate race

BOSTON – In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to win the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century, leaving President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marring the end of his first year in office.

The loss by the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold was a stunning embarrassment for the White House after Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save the foundering candidate. Her defeat on Tuesday signaled big political problems for the president’s party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

“I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. “There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient.”

Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation and the rest of his agenda. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.

Brown led by 52 per cent to 47 percent with all but 3 percent of precincts counted.

One day shy of the first anniversary of Obama’s swearing-in, the election played out amid a backdrop of animosity and resentment from voters over persistently high unemployment, Wall Street bailouts, exploding federal budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

For weeks considered a long shot, Brown seized on voter discontent to overtake Coakley in the campaign’s final stretch. His candidacy energized Republicans, including backers of the “tea party” protest movement, while attracting disappointed Democrats and independents uneasy with where they felt the nation was heading.

A cornerstone of Brown’s campaign was his promise to vote against the health care plan.

Though the president wasn’t on the ballot, he was on many voters’ minds.

“I voted for Obama because I wanted change. … I thought he’d bring it to us, but I just don’t like the direction that he’s heading,” said John Triolo, 38, a registered independent who voted in Fitchburg.

He said his frustrations, including what he considered the too-quick pace of health care legislation, led him to vote for Brown.

Coakley called Brown conceding the race, and Obama talked to both Brown and Coakley, congratulating them on the race.

The Democrat said the president told her: “We can’t win them all.”

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he would notify the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that Brown had been elected. Originally, he had said he might take over two weeks to certify the results of the special election, giving Democrats a window in which to try to rush through final passage of Obama’s health care plan.

Brown will be the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 30 years.

Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley’s supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Days before the polls closed, Democrats were fingerpointing and laying blame.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the House Democrats’ campaign effort, said Coakley’s loss won’t deter his colleagues from continuing to blame the previous administration.

“President George W. Bush and House Republicans drove our economy into a ditch and tried to run away from the accident,” he said. “President Obama and congressional Democrats have been focused repairing the damage to our economy.”

At Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, giddy Republicans cheered, chanted “USA” and waved the “tea party” version of the American flag.

Even before Brown won, the grass-roots network fueled by antiestablishment frustrations, sought credit for the victory, much like the liberal MoveOn.org did in the 2006 midterm elections when Democrats rose to power.

GOP chairman Michael Steele said Brown’s “message of lower taxes, smaller government and fiscal responsibility clearly resonated with independent-minded voters in Massachusetts who were looking for a solution to decades of failed Democrat leadership.”

Wall Street watched the election closely. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points, and analysts attributed the increase to hopes the election would make it harder for Obama to make his changes to health care. That eased investor concerns that profits at companies such as insurers and drug makers would suffer.

Across Massachusetts, voters who had been bombarded with phone calls and dizzied with nonstop campaign commercials for Coakley and Brown gave a fitting turnout despite intermittent snow and rain statewide.

Galvin, who discounted sporadic reports of voter irregularities throughout the day, predicted turnout ranging from 1.6 million to 2.2 million, 40 percent to 55 percent of registered voters. The Dec. 8 primary had a scant turnout of about 20 percent.

Voters considered national issues including health care and the federal budget deficits.

Fears about spending drove Karla Bunch, 49, to vote for Brown. “It’s time for the country, for the taxpayers, to take back their money,” she said. And Elizabeth Reddin, 65, voted for Brown because she said she was turned off by the Democrat’s negative advertisements, saying: “The Coakley stuff was disgusting.”

FRONT GROUP FINANCIAL INFORMATION: DBSA

This research was conducted by Evelyn Pringle… I hope you can note the inserted comments from her and look below to read my comments, which I’ll leave off the article portion and put in the comment box.

The 2006 Annual Report for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance shows that AstraZeneca gave the group more than $500,000 in 2006.Companies that gave between $150,000 and $499,000 included Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Forest Laboratories, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Pfizer, and Shire Pharmaceuticals each gave between $10,000 and $149,000.)

It also publishes the following message which explains where some of the drug money went:

Speaking Out for New Moms

Six years ago, after giving birth to her first child, a successful 41-year-old sales manager plunged to her death from a Chicago hotel’s 12th floor as firefighters pleaded with her. Melanie Blocker-Stokes took her own life, despite medical help and the support of family and friends.

Melanie’s tragedy soon prompted legislation in both the U.S. House and Senate. If passed, the Melanie-Blocker Stokes Postpartum Depression and Research Act and the MOTHER’s Act will help the families and women afflicted by postpartum depression (PPD) through lifesaving educational programs and screening services.

In January, DBSA sent an Advocacy Alert asking you to write your legislators in support of these PPD bills. Thousands of you sent letters to Congress through our Legislative Action Center (LAC). As time went on, instead of contacting individual legislators, you began to ask specific congressional committees (like the House Committee on Energy and Commerce), to support a vote rather than just a bill.

Unfortunately, rumors and lies began circulating on the Web, as outspoken opponents began asking people not to support these bills. While they called themselves “experts,” none of them had any expertise in mental health or any PPD-related field. They claimed the legislation was just a conspiracy by big pharmaceutical companies to push new moms to take unnecessary medication.

Tell that to the more than 800,000 women who will develop a diagnosable postpartum mood disorder this year! To debunk these myths, on April 8, DBSA sent you another alert marked “Urgent.” Your response has been nothing less than amazing-unprecedented, Web experts tell us! Just nine hours after our alert, you’d sent 1,200 letters to legislators.

In the next two days, you sent 6,300 more. After one month, you’d sent over 15,000 letters speaking out against the PPD rumors! And, for the first time, other groups are proactively joining us.

Organizations and blog sites like Postpartum Support International (PSI), Postpartum Progress, Moms Speak Up, Becoming Me, Beyond Blue and EmpowerHer are linking their readers to our LAC so that even more letters reach Congress.

Did you know that as few as five letters can make a difference in how your legislator votes? Even if you’ve already sent a letter supporting PPD legislation, please send another.

Her blog reports “that Susan Stone over at Perinatal Pro is alerting everyone to the new petition created by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance to support the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act. She states that last year’s petition generated more than 24,000 signatures. The petition has been reintroduced this year to try and get this legislation passed once again.”

The blog carries a live link to an advocacy alert page where “you can scroll down, enter your zip code and generate letters of support in a matter of seconds for the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act that will be sent to your local Congresspeople and Senators.”

Ms Stone further advises: “I just sent my letters. I know you’re thinking “but I already did that last year.” Well that was then and this is now. Do it again.”

First, an update on Enne Currie. We are still waiting for any information whatsoever on the whereabouts of Dirul Lewis, her son, who was illegally relocated by his captors in the mental health system with the support of the mental health court overseeing his case. Enne is fighting the courts to learn where he has been taken and regain her conservatorship status which was also illegally cancelled without a hearing or a reason. We will update everyone as soon as we get more information.

The MOTHERS Act

Bobby Rush introduced The MOTHERS Act in the House of Representatives on January 6. Today Robert Menendez introduced the bill in the Senate. According to those pushing for the bill The MOTHERS Act also has support from “Senate leadership.”

Thanks to E.T. Cook & Associates for getting that site built and helping with the transition. Their time and resources were donated for our cause and the people of America are definitely worth it!

Robert Menendez states in his press release that The MOTHERS Act was close to passing last year, but failed because of one Senator. (Way to ignore the tremendous grassroots efforts of all the Americans who called, faxed, and pounded the pavement traveling to DC to protest this killer bill, Bob!) But when it comes right down to it, close call or not, the truth of the matter is that without railroading legislation through in the dark of night in omnibus bills or voting on this without a debate (as the House of Representatives did), nightmares like The MOTHERS Act would never see the light of day in the U.S. – at least not from any Congress concerned with the well being of innocent citizens.

The blessing of a few months of extra time without a MOTHERS Act has certainly helped prevent untold numbers of deaths and much unnecessary suffering- and for that, the mothers and children of America owe a debt of gratitude to each and every Senator who voted against cloture for Harry Reid’s Omnibus bill (containing The MOTHERS Act) last Summer.

I pray that some day soon these politicians will wake up and realize how much harm is caused by psychotropic drugs and electroshock, and that they will stop supporting programs that would certainly bring about more and more deaths of innocent American women and children.

Please – help by spreading our petition around the country and the world. It will take a huge united effort to beat this bill, and your help is needed now more than ever.

Thanks to Jason Whited of the Las Vegas City Life newspaper for doing what few other reporters these days are willing to do and that is – reporting the truth. And thanks for the information on Carol Blocker’s new spin on ‘her’ bill.

“AT times, the pressures that come with holding national office must outweigh the perks.

Just ask U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid how he’s holding up these days.

As if working around the clock to hammer out a massive Wall Street bailout, avoiding a nationwide economic meltdown and ensuring the federal government has enough money to function during the upcoming congressional recess weren’t enough, Reid now faces ardent protests from Iowa to Texas for his support of a controversial measure that aims to reduce postpartum depression…”

In today’s Las Vegas City Life, Jason Whited reports on Harry Reid’s incorporation of The MOTHERS Act into his massive omnibus – the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, S. 3297. Whited writes that in 2005 alone, 2,727 people died because of antidepressant drugs according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Whited also points out that many health organizations have raised serious concerns about antidepressants and fills readers in on the facts about how negative trials went unpublished for years. Whited goes on to ask, “Considering all this bad press for Big Pharma, why is Reid so supportive of a program that could funnel millions of unsuspecting patients toward the industry?”

Near the end of this article we see a new twist on an old story… from Carol Blocker. Blocker is Melanie Blocker Stokes’ mom. Her new and ‘improved’ response to the MOTHERS Act criticism?

“Those who are against this [bill] don’t know anything about the illness,” says Blocker. “Melanie didn’t take the drugs, even though they prescribed them to her.”

Given the fact that Melanie was hospitalized many times, the likelihood of her never taking any psychotropic drugs is about zero. Moreover, as Mrs. Blocker admits, her daughter was electroshocked and prescribed four separate cocktails of antidepresant, anti-anxiety, and antipsychotic drugs. Obviously and unfortunately, Carol Blocker is misinformed. Though nothing she can do will bring back Melanie – passing this bill would only cause more mothers the same grief that Carol is feeling. I think that Carol deserves an apology from the doctors who drugged and shocked Melanie to death, at the very least. The fact that we all are horrified by Melanie’s death at the hands of psychiatry does not mean that we are any less sympathetic towards Melanie’s family. But unlike Carol Blocker or Harry Reid, we also sympathize with the thousands of women who have lost their babies due to antidepressant-induced spontaneous abortions, still births, fatal birth defects, and SIDS, and with the thousands of women who commit suicide every year as they were never warned that the drugs prescribed them can actually induce them to commit suicide.

I’m no stranger to trauma and grief, though I can’t say I know how Blocker feels. But neither can Carol Blocker say that I ‘don’t know anything’ about what she terms the ‘illness,’ or that I have no clue how Melanie felt… If you recall, I was suicidal and homicidal for four months on Zoloft, something proponents of the bill seem to repeatedly forget. Isaac nearly died right before my eyes and only after being prescribed Zoloft did I ever start contemplating killing myself or my son.

“Like Philo, her daughter didn’t want to take antidepressants either — a fatal mistake, she now says.”

It’s not that I simply ‘didn’t want to take antidepressants,’ but fortunately for myself, my husband, and my children, I realized it was the drugs that were making me suicidal and psychotic. If not, I may have ended up like Melanie Stokes. And perhaps those proponents of drugging women should take a look at my YouTube video or Julie Edgington’s videos about Manie to see what exactly we are opposed to. We’re opposed to the use of as well as increasing the use of antidepressants among pregnant and nursing mothers because they are dangerous. We are opposed because the FDA and international drug regulatory agencies warn these drugs can and do cause suicidal thinking and ideation. We are opposed because people with no prior history of depression or suicidal tendencies have become sounder the influence of these drugs, and numerous studies including those by Dr. David Healy verify this. So for Carol Blocker – or worse yet, Senator Harry Reid to make blanket statements that those of us who have nearly died or had our children nearly die say we are ‘misinformed’ is not only insulting, it is utter arrogance. We are not speaking from second hand experience, we lived it. We are not spouting drug company promotional statistics, we are citing drug regulatory agency warnings.

For my own mother, who was supervising me until I got off of Zoloft when Isaac was about 4 months old, I doubt she really understood what I was going through. “That’s not Amy,” she kept saying. But thankfully my mom found out the truth and insisted I read about it before it was too late. In fact, part of the reason I stopped taking Zoloft was that the FDA issued a black box suicide warning in the middle of my ‘treatment.’ How easily Blocker and Reid have ignored our own FDA’s statement of facts based on clinical trials showing that antidepressants double the rate of suicidality.

If it hadn’t been for people speaking out against these drugs at FDA hearings and elsewhere, I wouldn’t be here opposing the MOTHERS Act today. I would be dead or in prison, and Isaac might not be here. Toby would never have been born. The news I got from the FDA and other families came in the nick of time for me, though it was too late for Melanie.

I would never wish what has happened to Carol Blocker, Melanie’s husband and loved ones, or most of all, Sommer – Melanie’s daughter – on anyone. That is what I find so hard to understand about those who push for this bill. Even when faced with the explanation for why their friends and loved ones have died or suffered, so many people do not want to accept that drugs or shock were the culprit. This would explain how someone who did lose her daughter could be okay with a bill that would assuredly cause more women to suffer as I suffered, as Melanie suffered, and as Andrea Yates and other moms are suffering. Whether or not The MOTHERS Act passes, women and children continue dying preventable deaths. But one thing is for certain – it is undeniable what the real intentions of those who push this bill are, and that is force.

So, did Melanie take her drugs, or not? The record is now being complicated by Carol’s most recent statement, even though all the stories from the past 7 years in papers as well as on Carol’s own website, stated that (http://www.melaniesbattle.org/story.html):

“Melanie’s [sic] was hospitalized three times in seven weeks. She was given four combinations of anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant medications. She also underwent electroconvulsive therapy. Her family rallied around her with all their strength, but in the end, Melanie jumped to her death from the twelfth floor of a Chicago hotel.”

If we’re to assume it’s true that Melanie was on and off her meds, did she not want to take them because perhaps she knew that they were making her worse? If that’s the case, was that why she was hospitalized, so she could be given them forcibly? Or how about the electroshock… Was that given as an alternative to the four combinations of drugs which Blocker now claims her daughter didn’t want to take? How soon after Melanie’s fourth hospitalization (as is now claimed) did she stop taking drugs? The time lapse was approximately 11 days from the release from the hospital, if I remember correctly, until her death, and she was missing for about 3 days before her suicide. Was she in sudden withdrawal from four drugs when she jumped out of that hotel window?

Does Carol Blocker really consider it a ‘fatal mistake’ when women don’t ‘take their drugs?’ Is the real message here about The MOTHERS Act that women should be force-drugged? What about the provision in the bill which states that nobody knows the ’cause’ of PPD and psychosis and that we need more taxpayer-funded drug research to come up with a new drug – that what the NIH is already doing is not enough? That one seems to be based on the premise that all the drugs Melanie did indeed take simply didn’t work so we need to find new and better drugs. This entire bill and PR campaign is made up of mutually exclusive and absurd claims. ‘Take drugs. Drugs are good. Fund development of new drugs because we don’t know what we’re doing yet. But still take drugs. And go to the hospital. This is not about force. Oh wait, yes it is.’

So what I would like to see, and what America deserves if we are expected to live under a new ‘Melanie Blocker-Stokes’ regime of forced drugging for moms, are answers to the following questions:

1) What drugs was Melanie taking, and when?

2) What reaction did she have to the drugs and electroshock?

3) What made the doctors release her from the hospital? (Perhaps like I had to do to get released, she was again becoming compliant with her meds?)

4) If Carol Blocker now wants us to believe that her daughter never took antidepressants, or was in withdrawal from them when she ended her life, is the message here that women need to be forced to take drugs? Because that is sure what it sounds like.

Carol Blocker also stated, “If government can act to avoid the death of just one more young mother or her newborn baby, it should do so.” Finally – a statement we can agree on. The only way that the government can or should avoid the death of just one more young mother or her baby is by staying out of women’s lives, health, medicine cabinets, and by leaving us with our right to life and liberty. Because passing The MOTHERS Act would not only not avoid more deaths, it would by its very nature cause even more.

One last thought:

“Senator Reid stands firmly with the broad coalition of mental health and children’s groups who want this bill passed, and he hopes those blocking these women and children from the help they need will consider the toil their opposition is taking and let this important legislation move forward.”

How would the government staying out of the expansion of forced treatment prevent women from getting ‘help?’ I’ll ask Senator Reid to explain this one. According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, one third of pregnant women in the U.S. take psychotropic drugs at some point during their pregnancies. There are also forums online where you can learn about ‘support groups,’ and numerous pharmacies now offer generic prescriptions for $4. This just goes to show that Reid is out of touch and too proud to admit he could ever be wrong. That is the only real fatal mistake here.

If Senator Reid is going to stand firmly with the pHARMa cartel-influenced groups who want the bill passed – then it is up to us to keep the heat on and insist that the truth be told. Apparently no amount of facts would change his mind, but that does not mean that the American people have to accept his unbending will.

Given that, I ask simply that the government fulfill its obligation of being for the people and by the people and doing what it was meant to do and that is to protect our rights, not take them away. That is the only purpose of Government. Not to oppress, but to promote freedom – and The MOTHERS Act turns women into slaves of Pharma and the government. It must not be allowed to see the light of day. Voters everywhere should consider that their rights are about to be taken away and handed over to those who intend to harm them. We have to stand up for our vulnerable and uninformed mothers and children in any and every way we can.

BREATH – The Official Blog of MADNAP – momsandmeds.com

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Originally posted on The Bitter Pill:Kickstarter is a website for artists to use to raise money and complete awesome projects. The best thing to come to the informed consent movement since Thomas Szasz could just be the new, upcoming film by Dan Jenski, “ADDicted” which basically gives Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta and the like a…

Originally posted on The Bitter Pill:In the studies submitted to the FDA for approving Zoloft (a drug that has killed numerous families, babies, mothers, children), the drug maker covered up the fact that Zoloft failed to outperform placebo, according to a new consumer fraud lawsuit filed by the firms Baum, Hedlund Aristei & Goldman…

In what was more than likely originally an attempt to prove that depression causes birth complications, researchers from Yale, Tufts, et al found in two new studies that antidepressants increase the risk of preterm birth and seizures. Read more at this link on the newly redesigned UNITE website.